noises from dog n’ moon.

Part of running a boutique advertising agency is handling incoming calls and request for work (and revisions, of course). As you get more and more busy, you’ll be faced with the dilemma of what to do when you have more projects than time to do them and more and more of a need for an 8th day and 25th hour tacked on. This is where the “Shirley Principle” comes in. The SP dictates that he/she who is easiest to work for and with gets all requests moved to the top of the list. Its very much like having an automatic “RUSH” stamp on every request that lands in the voicemail or email box.

We have done work for Shirley for years now, and she doesn’t call but once a year or so, but when there are jobs to be done, comps to be submitted,  revisions to be made, and deadlines to be met, she is never anything other than the perfect client. She is forward about what she prefers, direct about what needs to be changed, assertive about what her budget limitations are, and agreeable when we push back on her or accidentally increase the opacity of a drop shadow so clumsily that it makes the message all but disappear from a 15k piece print run (hypothetically speaking). The best part about working for Shirley is that we often work for her for free (or for Starbucks cards), simply because the working relationship is so agreeable. We even built the page for her son’s yearbook message from the parents. How many high school kids have an ad agency laying out their yearbook pages?!?

Let this be a lesson to you, potential clients, and to all of you social humans in general: Smiling Faces bring results!

I was able to spend last week at the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Show in Anaheim, CA with Taylor Guitars. To give you a quick rundown, NAMM is an industry-only trade show held twice a year, but the Winter show is the big kahuna of them all. This is the place where manufacturers of all things musical launch their new products for the year- and they pull out all of the stops. My first year there, I saw my favorite guitar player idol (John Jorgenson), the actor Keanu Reeves, and the awkwardly captivating Elvira all in the span of 90 seconds. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put their trade show booth into place and nothing is too excessive or over the top.

I started working as a freelance contract employee with Taylor about a year ago. Their marketing department hired me to help support the launch of a new guitar line at the show, and that relationship continued with monthly trips around the nation on what they call The Taylor Road Show, which is a national tour of in-store events where consumers are able to interact with the guitars, the manufacturers, and professional musicians in a casual atmosphere. It’s rare that a company would send out it’s employees, professional musicians as demo clinicians, and the most elite of its expensive items all for the sole purpose of letting end-users and consumers interact with them in a tactile way. Case in point, there is a section of each Road Show date set aside as the “Petting Zoo”, where customers are encouraged to play $10k custom one-off guitars. What company would do that? In addition to footing the bill to send employees, rare guitars, and preemptive local Road Show advertising to many of their US and Canadian dealers, they also invite other manufacturing teams to the plant for behind-the-velvet-rope tours to see how they turn a tree into an award-winning guitar. Not only do they invite the competition to come see manufacturing, but they’ll invite manufacturers from other fields (like the Automotive Industry) to view the workflow and production methods.

Having spent a little bit of time down at Taylor Guitars (located in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego) with the marketing department, I was able to ask why an industry leader would be so open with their ideas. Conventional thinking says, “If we have an idea that is unique, we should hold on to it so that consumers know who the pioneers are and where to find that which they can’t find elsewhere.”

The response from Taylor’s Director of Product Development, David Hosler, has changed the way I view marketing. He responded by saying that Production is a very little part of the game. Anyone can produce anything. “By the time we show a product at NAMM, other companies have already duplicated it in hopes of riding the wave of success”, he said. So showing people the production process is not giving away anything that they can’t figure out on their own. No, real success comes from two other things. 1.) Success is Personality Driven, not Program Driven. 2.) You can never rule out the power of Creativity. Anyone can manufacture anything, but the company that continually brings something unique to the market is ultimately going to see success. And a company is able to bring something unique to the market when the role players in that company share a vibrant, engaging, creative, and passionate personality.

So what does this mean to you and your business venture? Content is King, and Creativity is his Queen. If you’re thinking that you have the “Super Product” that will pull the public away from their TiVOs long enough to rush out and buy one, then you may be in for a hard fall. If, however, you have any product at all, and you’re thinking that with some creative zigging, zagging, and tail-waving, you might be able to catch the public’s attention- now you might be on to something. Take it from the man who has had his hands in the development of the last 3 award-winning creations for Taylor Guitars, a company that does sales in the tens of millions each year: your creativity and your personality are ultimately more important than your product, because your creativity and personality ensure that a single successful product is not a fluke.

Perhaps it’s time to hire someone to share in the creative process and create your personality-driven campaign or product launch?

Every now and again, we see an advertising campaign that sticks with us. Which isn’t necessarily an endorsement of the caliber of its genius, it’s just the barometer of how different it is.The first of such cases is this campaign for the tv show, Desperate Housewives. The responsible advertising agency chose to print rubberized dummy stripes for parking lots at a boutique (read: expensive) grocery store here in Southern California. It reads, “This Parking for Desperate Housewives Only“. It’s an interesting way to help your market identify with the product. In a sense, it blurs the lines between who is the actual Desperate Housewife- the few who are paid millions to play them on television, or the many who are shopping for the family dinner at a local supermarket.
  

The second idea is one that is more bizarre than clever. But in advertising, the bizarre often gives birth to the successful. Once that happens, the bizarre idea is then relabeled as clever, as if it had been all along…  It’s complicated but part of the fun of playing the advertising game. It’s like gambling on the public’s tastes. So this particular campaign could be spotted on a sunny day in mid-December on Katella Blvd. (Disneyland’s front sidewalk). But you had to look quickly because it was five moped scooters, driven by five similarly dressed individuals, all with the same body type, posture, and driving skills, and all on the move at quite a clip. To be honest, I’ve never felt more like I was in the middle of a YouTube video than when the adver-parade passed me. So I did what any right-minded marketing person would do, I pulled out my trusty iPhone, dangerously fumbled with the buttons and tried to collect proof that I wasn’t going crazy or seeing quintuple. (Note to self: time to get the SUV’s dusty dashboard detailed…)
 

So what’s a business owner to think about these two types of unconventional advertising? Well, I think they’re a sign of things to come, in that the media is infiltrating our lives in more and more creative ways. Do people read magazines anymore? I know that I commonly Tivo shows for the sole purpose of being able to fast forward through the commercials. Classic advertising channels like magazine ads and commercials are a little less effective and therefore new advertising channels have to be explored. My parking space? My drive to the printer? These are just a couple of the new places that I’m being sold on new products. Having said that, the business owner must keep in mind that he or she needs to be prepared to explore the unconventional and the bizarre if he or she wants to compete in the marketplace. Additionally, more and more latitude must be given to the agencies to deliver on the promise of unique advertising and marketing. Designers and advertisers need to be a little left of center to be good at what they do anyway, why not utilize that commodity for your next successful campaign?

I guess some would call us crazy for pointing site visitors to another design firm. But you can’t argue with quality. I had the pleasure of going out to visit these fine folks last summer and can’t say enough good stuff about them. BUT, good people come through our lives all the time. It’s the design that comes out of this place that is abso-stinkin’-lutely unbelievable. Check out their portfolio. Buy a shirt.

It’s rare that a company actually feels bold enough to use tongue-in-cheek presentation in their advertising and printed materials. This is the first page of a user’s guide for a guitar amplifier by Line 6, a manufacturer of digital music products. Publicly traded, advised by Ivy League suit-types, shipping quantities in the hundreds of thousands, doing millions and millions of dollars in sales each year, pioneering digital technology in the Musical Instrument Industry.

No slouch.

Perhaps one reason for their success was the early adoption of a “3-C” approach to advertising: Cool, Clean, & Clever. I’d say that one of the most endearing qualities of a person is his (or her) ability to be confident without taking himself (herself) too seriously. There is a coolness that comes from a person who doesn’t find it necessary to choke the approachability out of himself by trying to manhandle others’ perception. And the successful companies are just large, complex enties that “feel” like a single person. Line 6 is that guy we like to have at our parties. He’s not gonna break anything. He’s not gonna steal anything. He’s not gonna vomit on your new shirt.